Love & Other Crimes: Short Review. By Joe Muldoon.
“It started with pancakes. That’s how I met her, Shaye. I had gone in almost every morning for 2 weeks and ordered the same thing.”
Retelling our story to police detectives, Noah (Justin P. Slaughter) is a drifter who quickly falls in love with a young waitress, Shaye (Jaelyn Sierra). Sierra and Slaughter have good chemistry together, easily the short’s highlight.
Apparently only lucky in his romantic life, Noah’s down on his luck with joblessness and having been kicked out of an apartment— but he very conveniently bumps into an old schoolmate, Parker (Jon Meggison), who happens to have a spare room in the apartment he shares with a friend. As we flit back-and-forth between our framing conversation with police detectives and a series of flashbacks, Noah says of Parker, that “he got caught up with the wrong crowd”.
And the wrong crowd, his flatmate is. Jason (Jordan Nancarrow) shares the place with Parker, and there’s an immediate edge to him. A drug dealer by trade, he’s brutal to those who’ve wronged him, but suspiciously cordial with Noah. And as Jason gradually lets Noah more in on his life and criminal activities, things go predictably wrong, culminating in a bloody finale.
There’s a lot going on here, and 22 minutes doesn’t leave much of a berth for cramming an ambitious number of ideas into one short. We’ve got a blossoming romance, a vicious drug dealer’s violently unravelling actions, and a police investigation used as a framing device for the story we’re told.
Love & Other Crimes certainly provides what it offers in its very title, but it isn’t given quite enough time to let these grow organically, with its finale (which calls back the short’s opening) feeling like a dramatic escalation, even after witnessing preceding events. Director Clarito Zapanta and writer Brandon Newman’s ambition ultimately leaves their story feeling too punchy, not allowing each sequence to properly breathe, leaving their ideas defeated by their pacing.
By Joe Muldoon
